-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Venezuela 's authoritarian president Hugo Chavez is a villain out of a Batman movie : buffoonish and sinister in equal measure .

Sunday 's vote result powerfully exposes both sides of his clown-prince system of rule .

Read more : Survivor and Venezuela 's long-serving president

For weeks before the vote , Chavez signaled a willingness to surrender power , should the result go against him . On Election Day itself , he gave the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal a quote indicating he foresaw the possibility of defeat .

`` Let 's get ready to recognize the results , whatever they are , '' he said . .

And yet just a few hours later , Venezuela 's Election Agency showed Chavez winning massively , by nearly 10 percentage points . Is the result legitimate ? That 's hard to say . Venezuela has not invited any international election observers since 2006 and anomalies have been observed in past votes , especially the 2004 referendum to recall Chavez from the presidency

Yet it should also be said : In Venezuela , the most important forms of vote fraud happen well before Election Day .

First , the Chavez regime systematically controls and manipulates the mass media , especially television . Francisco Toro , founder of the indispensable Caracas Chronicle blog writes in the New Republic :

`` Three minutes per day per broadcast outlet . That 's how much advertising each candidate is allowed in Venezuela in the weeks leading up to a presidential election . That 's six 30-second spots , no more . To long-suffering TV watchers in U.S. battleground states , that must sound like paradise . There 's a catch , though . While each candidate 's campaign is allowed no more than three minutes , the government can run as many ` institutional ' ads as it wants to promote its work . And in ChÃ ¡ vez-era Venezuela , such ads are generally indistinguishable from the official campaign ads , down to using designed-to-look-alike logos . ''

Apart from campaign ads , however , the president himself can commandeer as much TV time as he wishes , although in the case of the long-winded Chavez , such appearances may not be vote-winners . More relevant to the success of the president 's messaging is the regime 's habit of seizing TV stations that broadcast journalism of which the authorities disapprove .

Along with state media control goes massive government vote-buying .

News : Six more years with Chavez

The Los Angeles Times reports : `` Chavez in recent months has solidified his support base with massive giveaway programs , including one that aims to build 200,000 housing units for Venezuela 's poor . Another , called Mi Casa Bien Equipada , or My Well-Equipped House , has donated Chinese-made household appliances to tens of thousands of poor families . ''

The use of state oil funds for this kind of electioneering is driving Venezuela 's budget deficit for the year to the astounding level of 20 % of GDP , an incredible figure for an oil-exporting economy at a time of very high oil prices . -LRB- Context : The U.S. budget deficits that have so alarmed people during the Obama years never reached as much as 9 % of GDP . -RRB-

Venezuelan politics is distorted most of all by a pervasive mood of threat .

I visited Venezuela in 2010 . My visit began with a briefing at the U.S. Embassy . `` You 've been to Afghanistan ? '' Yes . `` You 've been to Iraq ? '' Yes . `` Well , congratulations . This is the most dangerous place you 've ever been . ''

Venezuala , with a population smaller than Canada 's , suffers more homicides than the United States . Robberies at gunpoint -- `` express kidnappings '' as they are called -- are regular occurrences in middle-class neighborhoods . And if middle-class neighborhoods evince any disaffection from the regime , they lose what little police protection they have , or even discover the police suddenly abetting and aiding the criminals that prey upon their community .

Property is seized . Businesses are arbitrarily nationalized . Conversations are eavesdropped upon . The Internet is policed , at least to the best of the -LRB- very limited -RRB- ability of Venezuela 's not very competent security forces .

Hugo Chavez has laid Venezuela 's economy to waste . One of the world 's great energy producers must turn its streetlamps off at night . One of the world 's wealthiest exporters can not afford to import enough food . One of the world 's energy superpowers is seeing its production slowly dwindle away because of chronic under-investment in the oil fields and the loss of access to technology as foreign companies are harassed and expropriated .

Did Venezuela vote for more of the same ? Chavez does have a militant populist constituency , and it 's not impossible that the final result does reflect what the voters actually did . But then , Vladimir Putin wins elections , too , and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won at least one . It is not elections alone that make a free society -- and a free society is what Venezuela long ago ceased to be .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum .

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David Frum : Venezuela 's Hugo Chavez has won ; his system of rule suspect , sinister

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He says Venezuela election fraud system evident in rigged media , vote-buying , police threat

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He says robberies and eavesdropping routine , economy in awful shape under Chavez

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Frum : Did Venezuelans really vote for this ? Hard to say in a society like it